Say what you will about Wikipedia, it’s one of the most brilliant off-shoots of the internet age. I use it all the time and often can’t imagine life without it. My first encounter with the internet came in 1995 when I started university, but before that I was a book whore (especially encyclopedias). I could curl up with a stack of those things and be happy as a clam for hours upon hours. Fast forward almost twenty years and those same encyclopedias are looking more and more redundant. Not only is Wikipedia fascinating for its “democratic”, or contributory/organic style of generating information, but the fact that it’s digitized can lead to some incredible examples of data visualization. Take the following one, for example, where every single date of significance in world history has been compressed into 100 seconds and represented by a droplet in a time lapse animation. Enjoy.
Source: PSFK
